University of Floridausers.clas.ufl.edu/burt/ Burt Yates Tempest/Tempest Dro… · Web...
Transcript of University of Floridausers.clas.ufl.edu/burt/ Burt Yates Tempest/Tempest Dro… · Web...
Ship-Shape
The sur-vivance of The Tempest and the comparative philological equivalence
between print edition and film adaptation we develop under its rubric can be more
fully appreciated as an archival problem in relation to the paratexts of books but to
the paratexts of modern editions of the play and cinematic paratexts of its
adaptations. We take the epilogue to be part of a crucial paratextual zone of that
resists and enables biopolitical archival management as a state of emergent
ignorance. Prospero asks to be sent off, to disembark with the gentle air of the
audience to fill his sails, as if he were a boat, set free, as if her were a spirit like Ariel,
whom he set free only a few lines earlier. The shipwreck in which no one drowns
and the wrecked ship that turns out to have been fully restored, the sailors having
been in a “dead sleep” (resembling the “good dullness” of Miranda’s sleep after
Prospero explains the backstory of the shipwreck to her) has the same economy of
the drowned book that floats away without drowning. (Ships, like books, are not
entities.) The Tempest is widely recognized for its highly elliptical narrative
structure, and we want to add that it also invites or appears to allow the reader
silently to fill these ellipses, or in the idiom of the play, to be “inclined to sleep” and
“cease more questions” (1.2. 185; 184). We turn first to the last page of the Folio
and the Arden Three edition of the Folio, then to Taymor and Greenaway’s title
sequences, prologues, epilogues, and endings the better to understand how in this
zone drowning a book can drown but not die; the book doesn’t get buried or
cremated, and is without a beginning or an ending.
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As we observed near the beginning of this essay, the epilogue has raised
questions for editors and directors because it divides Prospero’s name from his
character in the play, opening up the possibility that the name is a pseudonym. The
textual structure and the graphic design of the final page produces a structure
whereby Prospero becomes a phantasm, a revenant thought to be someone else, a
living performer or writer and radically external to the play world of The Tempest.
It’s as if “Spoken by Prospero” were as “spoken by . . . fill in the blank . . . that has
already been filled.” While whoever speaks under the name “Prospero” exercises a
weak sovereignty over the play in some respects, readings default to a proper name
whose gets retro-projected in more or less spectral over back over the play that
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name stands apart from and follows. Readers tend to assume that Prospero must
have drowned his book because he says in the Epilogue “all my charms ‘oerthrown”
and “ Now I lack spirits to enchant.” The assumption is almost what seems to go
without saying. Nevertheless, to infer from the Epilogue that Prospero has
destroyed his books is to fill in an ellipsis without giving the filled in event a specific
place. The Epilogue serves as a kind of guarantee that the text is a place holder for
the event it does not narrate or represent, namely the destruction of Propsero’s staff
and book.
We think this is a rather strange interpretive operation, all the stranger because it
is so easy to perform that one may not even notice having performed it, so strange
that it warrants further reflection. What are the limits of the reader’s backward
projection of Prospero into the play, if any? Why do so many productions and
adaptations of the play show Prospero or Miranda present for the shipwreck in the
first scene even though the stage direction for their entrance occurs at the beginning
of the second scene of Act One? Why, in short, do readers, editors, and directors all
use a paratext, the epilogue, in which Prospero is no longer identical with himself to
extend his sovereignty across the play, sometimes even when he is not on stage,
effectively beginning the play begin before it begins?
The epilogue has a paradoxical economy in which Prospero’s return is
superfluous, a lack that can be made all the stronger either through this replacement
with an extra-textual referent, a referent who actually lived or as a spirit that haunts
the entire play. The epilogue works to make the play Prospero-centric.1 Readers
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tend not to wonder if other books have been left behind, if Caliban is left on the
island as a kind of librarian, Prospero becoming to Caliban as Gonzalo was to him
when Prospero and Miranda were set adrift.
Yet the textual place form that “Prospero” speaks is itself vulnerable. In the
Arden edition, the Vaughan Masons say that it can be cut: “The epilogue is not
required for a coherent reading or production because the play’s action is complete..
. .” We are not so sure. The last line of the play presents an editor and a director
with a problem of deciding how to interpret last line of the play, the epilogue:
“Please you, draw near”: Is this line addressed to the characters on stage who “Exit
omnes” after it is delivered? Or is it the first line of the epilogue, “you” referring to
the audience? The Vaughan-Masons interpolate two bracketed stage directions
“[aside to Ariel]” and “to the others]” just before “Please you, draw near” and the
Epilogue begins on the facing page (307). In a note at the bottom of the page (307),
the credit the Signet for these stage directions.2 The problem is that “Please you
draw near” does not make sense either way. “Draw near” is not synonymous with
the line “Come follow” that ends the first Act since it implies that the speaker is
stationary. But does Prospero leave the stage? When Richard II tells Mowbray and
Bolingbroke to “draw near,” Richard II remains in the same place. To make the
meaning of “you” as the characters who remain on stage in the play work, the V-M’s
have to imagine an off-stage cell to which Prospero is leading the remaining
characters. They gloss the sentence as follows: “Please . . . near. This line is
usually delivered to Prospero draws the court party into his cell, offstage. If
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Prospero remains on stage for the Epilogue, the line can be delivered to the
audience as he moves forward.” p. 307. If Prospero moves forward, then he, not
“you” is moving. A related problem arises from the stage direction “Exuent omnes.”
Does Prospero exit and then return? Or does he stay on stage and not exit until after
the epilogue, which is followed by the very straightforward stage direction, “exit.”
The Arden edition is a particularly useful example of what for us is re-editing
rather than un-editing the already edited Folio not only because it includes a
discussion of the Greenaway and Taymor films but because it reproduces a facsimile
of the last page of The Tempest, to which they append a note as follows: Note 21
The final page of The Tempest in Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies
(1623), with the “EPILOGVE” and “Names of the Actors” and, bleeding through from
the verso part of the sheet, part of the title and text of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”
p. 128. Certain semantic features disappear in the note. They omit “The Scene, an
unvn-inhabited island” as well as the “The” at the bottom right that is meant to help
the reader find his place at the top of the next page, the title “The” Two Gentleman of
Verona. The end of the last page text is the beginning of the next, and the definite
article the first word of a title.
The Vaughan-Masons perform other operations on the Folio tat, while far from
controversial, are nevertheless strange enough to deserve critical attention. They
silently move the “names of the actors” up to the second page of the edited text
(162), just after the title page (161). The first variant is listed as “0] “The Scene, an
vn-inhabited island” at the bottom of the page. They have zeroed it out. Extending
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the ambiguity about the speaker of the epilogue, they introduce as a probability that
the final paratext after the epilogue. In their introduction, the Mason-Vaughans say,
without offering any justification, that “the Folio’s ‘Names of the Actors’ describes
Caliban as a ‘sauage and deformed slaue,’ words that may not be Shakespeare’s.”
(32). In their notes they write: “0.1 NAMES OF THE ACTORS This list, originally
appended to the text in F and recorded here verbatim, was probably compiled by
the scrivener Ralph Crane; the descriptive terms may reflect his knowledge of
contemporary stage practice and perhaps, too, his personal assessment of the
characters performed at the time. See Introduction, p. 127” (p. 163). One mystery
remains unsolved by the Vaughan-Masons: who write the line “Scene, an Vn-
inhabitable island?”
Drowning the Paratext
With this understanding of the strange kinds of things that can happen when the
Folio is re-edited in mind, we are now in a better position to appreciate how the
epilogue motivates decisions in Greenaway and Taymor film adaptations concerning
when to show Prospero or Prospera, when to show Miranda, when to show the
destruction of Prospero’s books, how to show it, and how manage those decisions in
their cinematic paratexts. Although the two films are strikingly different, Taymor’s
being far more accessible than Greenaway’s, both bear structural similarities: each
begins before the beginning and ends after the ending.
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THAT’S IT FOR NOVEMBER 6
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Problem of attribution. In their introduction to the Arden 3, the Vaughans say, without offering any justification, that: “the Folio’s ‘Names of the Actors’ describes Caliban as a ‘sauage and deformed slaue,’ words that may not be Shakespeare’s.” (32)
Caliban as anagram, 31 “it was either too obvious or too cryptic for critical comment until 1778 (31)Prospero is also, as briefly discussed above, a magician. He wears a magic robe, uses a magic staff, and refers to his books on magic. Magic is his technology, a means of getting what he wants.” (25)Only at Prospero’s final invitation, ‘Please you draw near,’ do they join in one place. (17)A correlation though not necessary but nevertheless motivated between the end title sequence and the opening title sequence, There is opening title sequence in the The Tempest.Miranda is present, but almost overly so. The footage s undercranked so that she appears to be running at a superhuman speed, as if she were a spirit like Airlel or had magical powers like Propsera. She also gets Prospera to clam down as riel does.
The DVD menu is worth discussing (will match Anonymess discussion).It begins and ends with Prospero and is all shown as if underwater.There are two shots of books "drowning." There is also shot of theship burning in the distance.
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The ship also burns as it is wrecked by Ariel, and there's a shot ofit fully restored in a harbor.
The film is good for us in that it highlights the play's not soobvious opposition between burning and drowning.The fantasy you identified is operative all over the play, I amrealizing. Like Miranda freaking out when the ship goes down andProspero reassuring her; but then Ariel has to reassure Prospero, whocontradicts her own reassurance of Miranda and is similarlyreassured--almost the same words--not a hair on their heads harmed.Ariel just gives a more detailed account of what happened to thesurvivors. Ariel also talks about the ship burning (in the play)--Ihad forgotten that.
Interesting too what gets a flashback and what does not--there's noflashback for Prospera getting few books with Gonzalo's help or of herlibrary WE see no books in a flashback of Prospera and Miranda (baby)on the boat in which they are set adrift.
Just wondering f the issue of the book not being a prop and being bothsingular and plural is related to drowning as a figure for thedisappearance of the prompt book in production--or its being a prompt(there, but invisible, off-stage).So The Tempest as a kind of tele-prompter / ing?No book burning there, but also no bookdestruction, no tearing up a book, or tearing out a page; nofigurative desire, as in R and J, to "tear" a "name" ("Had I itwritten")
Julie Taymor’s The Tempest; opening title over a sand castle—begins to melt in the rain, Miranda is holding it; cross-cutting between ship and Miranda running; The bed catches fire; ten cuts to Prospera, then Miranda running to her, ship burning in the distance; as inside of ship catches fireShot of Prospara in the menu is shot when she turns the clouds back after the storm and after the ship as sunk.No flashback of knowing how I loved my books, furnished with me”Ariel merges form watery reflection and makes a splash, literally, as his entrance.Flashback after he merges to the shipwreck—ship on fire, Airel surrounded by fire too. Citing lines about sulpherous ship—so there is textual motivation for showing it burning.
Boat burning versus book burning.Ariel quotes Ferdinand mockingly “o devils here” (sounds like Caliban)But are they safe?Not a hair perished.
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Look. The ship is hidden. So we see the ship in harbor completely restored. Taymor wildly accelerated what we learn only in the final scene of the play, giving us even more reassurance, defaulting the audience to her Ariel-centric reading of the play, as if the audience were Ariel.
Ariel is transparent, moves around with a sound effect in a kind of fastforward tracing.Flashack of Ariel being trapped in the pine; cut back to Prospera with background of forest splashing down the screen as the new background comes into view-a variation of the wipe, or inversion of it.“invisible to every eyeball else”
Porspera on Caliban. We cannot miss him. He does make our fire. Fetches in our wood.Caliban gets no flashbacks when he tells the story of showing Prospera the island.
Miranda gets the abhorr’d slave . . . I taught thee language” linesProspera so slave hence—the actor was in Amistad, playing a slave; also in Gladiator.
Ariel sings full fathom five under water, superimposed on shot of Ferdinand hearing ad looking around to find who is singing, in a series of shots, “Where should this music be?Follow it or rather it has drawn me, it begins again. Falsetto—a bit like Greenaway.Full fathom, under water, but also in a forest (through which Ferdinand is walking—close ups of both Ariel and FerdinandThe ballad does remember my drowned father.The film’s diegesis separates “realism” from “magical” special effects, and also combines them, overlaps, in some sequences, differentiating the spirit Ariel from the “real” human characters.
Myself am Naples, ever since my father.
Ariel appears only in shots with Prospera—not in sots of Ferdinand and Miranda. “I charge thee that thou attend me.”(Prospera telling Miranda the tale—would cure deafness—doe’st thou mark?”—Prospera thinking her call doesn’t trough? Tat she has to keep replacing it, redialing? As if Miranda were not there, as she couldn’t tell by looking to see if Miranda is listening or not?
Ariel’s pine-trees and paper? Pre early modern, I guess. Rags, not ood pulp as source of paper.
Cut to fire in Prospera—“so lie there my art”
Prospera didn’t harm a hair of any crew member, she tells Miranda.
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Lots of chemical bottles full of liquids in her cave, out of focus in and in soft focus or in focus with racking focus.
Flashback montage cross cut with Miranda’s speech—and to Prospera. Flashbacks in bluish hue. Shot of Gonzalo given her a “package,” a sheet covering something square (the books?) here is also a chest in her boat.Boatswain is blackMusic sounds a like Nymanish
Foul water shalt thy drink
EXT. HIGH PROMONONTORY OVER LOOKING THE OCAEAN – NIGHT
As promised, PROSPERA throws her staff of the cliff and watches it shatter into
millions of pieces on the rocks below.
Prospera’s books sink slowly one by one into the deep, black sea as the main credits
begin. A haunting female voice sings Prospera’s last speech.
Miranda to Prospero, I.2.
Prospera’s Books
DVD menu loop shows everything happening as if underwater; the ship is shown burning; there are two separate shots of books “drowning”; begins and ends with Prospera; she is in close up at the end, eyes closed, then open, as if it had been her dream; begins with low angle shot of her in her cloack with her staff—she never holds her books, no library.
Or garments are as fresh (Gonzalo repeats what Ariel has already said). Same economy of destruction and restoration—through “made wet”Burns cross over from prop to non prop from burning to drowning. “drown my books” last se of “drown” in the play?
Dream/Re/Work
End credits:Books fall—music—then a woman sings the epilogue to a minor key song—afer producer credit Visual effects supervisor Kyle Cooper“which was to please”followed guitar—then “now I want spirits to inform
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cast members show
to title The TempestA Julie Taymor filmAnd cones to below the end the line credits books have Laurence Sterne marble covers“let your indulgence (repeated)last book disappearssets me freeNow I want spirits to inform” and the epilogue repeats released by prayerMore guitar—also a lead guitar-builds louder, same loopNow I want spirits begins over againBy prayer . .which pierces so, pierces that it assaults, mercy itself and frees . . PauseA’as you from faults from
Coda Betha WilliamsLet your indulgence, let your indulgence set me free as final credits appea adnd copyright.
One last book—big—with extra pages, then sound, then an icon with a page, three more icons, then warning,Antipiracy warning
Theater as transcendental object. Inventory moments in which the play letters on setting in motion a direction that make the diegesis collapse. “Homo fuge” moment. All moments are in a play world, not part of the real world. You’re watching a kind of living death, character between Marlowe’s live and the character’s lives or actor’s reanimation.
“We could isolate the flashbacks . . . color of blue and force perspective and
miniatures in the flashbacks to separate them from the present, in which we used
naturalistic colors.”
Ariel on shipwreck “I divide and burn in many places”
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In the published screenplay,
“INT. LIBRARY – DUSK
The room is filled with Prospera’s books. In the center of the small space the young
lovers play chess . . .” 160
Graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forth
By my so potent art.
“Wherefore did they not that hour destroy us?”
Caliban: “Nor lead me, like a firebrand in the dark,” 2.2. 6
Boatswain: “We were dead of sleep.”
Stephano: Com on your ways, open your mouth. Here is that which will give
language to you, cat. 2.2. 81-82-echoes Caliban’s “you gave me language” to Miranda.
Trinculo: I should know that voice. It should be—but he is drowned, And these are
devils. 2.2. 86-87
Alonso speaking about Ferdinand: He is drowned
Whom we stray to find, and the sea mocks
Our frustrate search on land. 3.3.8-10
Ariel as harpy:
The never surfeited sea
Hath caused to belch you up3.3.55-56
Thee of thy son, Alonso
In film, magic banquet has animals and fruits and then leaves follow out from it and
then crows or ravens and then Ariel.
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Audiocommentary over chess scene—the board is made of sand, meant to recall the
sandcastle at the beginning; the chess pieces are made of rock and coral.
No books are visible in these shots of M and F playing chess, contrary to the
published screenplay.
Miranda no longer wearing leggings but a dress (to indicate her return to Europe,
according to Taymor.
“Lava dogs, the bees are not in the original script but you can see better how Ariel is
doing P’s bidding from scene to scene.”
Usually, she doesn’t have the confrontation between Caliban and Prospero—he is
looking directly at the stick. Shot reverse shots in close ups—“he leaves and does
not look back, forever free,” cut back to extreme close up of Prospera (like rough
magic sequence).
“I rearranged where this song happens.”
Another long take until “there I “ and see kaleidoscope in one of her earlier visions
so that he would just become water again.
“And do the murder first” 4.1.432 The part about burning Prospero’s books drops
out.
Ariel as harpy:
But remember
. . that you three
From Milan did supplant good Prospero,
Exposed unto the sea, which hath requite it,
Him and his foul deed” 3.3.68-72
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Prospero “When I have decked the sea with drops fall salt” 1.2. 155
Mine eyes, ev’n sociable to the show of thine,
Fall fellowly drops. 5.1.63-64
The se-change is a form of encrustation—what dissolves becomes permanent-dones
coral, eyes, pearsl. Almost like a sonnet. What is the tense of “are”? Have been made
(as in “are now changed completely”)? Or present? As in “are now being changed, in
the process of”)
Ariel shot in slow-motion—Ben W had to reloop his voice so that iw ould match the
Cut back to Proserpa—you can see a book on her table, but she is turned away from
it. slow motion.
on table—omnivorous. Ariel’s harpy sequence activated by shots of Propsera
dropping a black feather in a glass calchemical bottle. Which turns blue (like ink)
and hten close up of he bottle as water explodes out of it.
They hath bereft thee, and do pronounce by me,
Linger’ng perdition, worse than any death 3.3-75-77
Like supposed destruction a means of speculation on disposal of corpses, sleep is a
kind f suspended animation or cryonic freezing. Prospero puts Miranda asleep.
Ariel later makes Gonzalo and Antonio sleep. Ariel has the men in the ship sleep.
Caliban questions most acutely the border between sleeping and waking.
Sebastian’s a “very sleepy language.”
The seven-minute-long end title sequence of Taymor’s Tempest, designed by Kyle
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Cooper, however, gives expressive form to the moment when Prospero ‘drowns’ his
book: as the credits roll and the camera is submerged under water, we watch
Prospera’s books (in plural form) fall slowly through the ocean heading toward the
bottom musically accompanied by a haunting version of Shakespeare’s epilogue
scored by Elliot Goldenthal. Taymor originally cut Prospero’s epilogue from the film
script but ended up restoring it. In The Tempest, the book published as a companion
piece to the film, Taymor writes:
The film’s last image of Prospera on the ocean cliff, her back to the camera,
tossing her magic staff to the dark rocks below, and the staff’s subsequent
shattering, is the ending. But when all was cut and timed and scored and
mixed, the rhythm of the end of the film felt truncated, incomplete. I asked
Elliott [Goldenthal] to take these last great words [the epilogue] and set
them to music for the seven-minute-long end-title sequence. And to that
haunting female vocal, sung by Beth Gibbons. The credits rolled and we
drowned the books of Prospera in the deep dark sea. (21)3
Taymor enlarges authorial agency beyond the individual in the ‘Rough Magic’
preface to the book, writing that ‘we drowned the books of Prospera’). (p. 21) Yet
this enlargement of cinematic authorship depends on not only shifting Propsoero’s
“rough magic” speech to the end of the film as Prospera’s ventriloquized “Coda,”(p.
21) but on the final credits. Because “the end of the film felt truncated, incomplete, I
asked Elliot [Goldenthal] to take those last great words and set them to music for
the seven-minute-long end title sequence” (21) during we witness the visualized
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consequences of Prospera’s declaration of her intent to ‘drown’ her ‘books’ . . I read
Taymor’s film as an allegory of the immersion of the book into a residual paratexual
storage space, sending off her film and accommodating a readerly and spectatorial
desire for an authorial force by encrypting and spectralizing the absent writer of the
book. She accompanies this allegorical depiction of displaced authorship with a
speech-turned-requiem sung by a female extra-diegetic voice identified only in the
end credit sequence rather than spoken by Helen Mirren (Prospera). The authorial
specters of the film are re/called at the end of the tie-in screenplay book. The last
two pages of the book show a still taken from the film’s closing credit sequence of a
book opening up after it has been plunged into the water with the production and
cast credits superimposed over the left-hand page. (Figures X.1 and X.2 [the verso
and recto pages].)
Figure 0 (verso page) Figure 0.0 (recto page)
In a paratextual space usually left blank, namely, the inside back cover and facing
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page, the film credits for the director and actors are printed just to the left of an
‘uncredited’ book falling though water, little bubbles surrounding it. The book of the
film thus showcases a book displaying neither title nor author while simultaneously
recording Taymor as the film’s ‘author’ (asserted via her writer, director and
producer multiple credits here in combination with the ‘Julie Taymor Adapted from
the Play by William Shakespeare’ authorial designation on the volume’s front
cover): the interstingly double move in which Taymor claims a kind of hybrid
authorship - crediting Shakespeare as her source - appears and disappears as one
turns the page and then, presumably, closes the book. By focusing on the books
opening as they fall underwater, Taymor invites us to ask a new question, namely,
Taymor quietly insists on the drowning Prospera’s unidentifiable books makes them
unreadable even though the pages are open.
Taymor’s protracted endings. Propsera is literally cut off from her voice, her
promise already made off-camera and fulfilled, after, the end of the film, also in a
voice-over. The “O mistress mine” shot has a different kind of incongruity that
nevertheless makes the : the singing is of course dubbed in post-production, but it’s
not clear whether the voice is the actors; at points, it look like he is lip-synching.
This Across the Universe moment has includes some superimposition. But the real
oddity is that the song is taken from another play that of course has a parallel (the
shipwreck and mistaken believe that a loved one has drowned) but Feste makes no
sense in context since Ferdinand has his mistress.
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
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That can sing both high and low; Trip no further, pretty sweeting, Journeys end in lovers’ meeting— Every wise man’s son doth know. What is love? ’tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What’s to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty,— Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III (1602)4
Rough magic follows her creating a ring of fire around her as she says “Ye elves” and
also has some superimposed flashbacks in montage form.
The film ends with a series of liberations also not in the play:1. After the Europeans exit, Prospero lets Caliban go. No dialogue. Just lots of cutting back and forth until we see Caliban walking up the steps of the cell and getting away.2. Propsera then lets Aerial go.3. She then fulfills her promise, as if letting herself go--throws staffAnd then "dissolve" into end Ariel speaks from pool , same as we saw in the early.
Set Caban and his confederates free. Unite the spell.
Then special effects of Ariel made of bees throwing and blowing out bees at C,S and
T, who end up at the cell.
Prospera’s library books are hidden—never ID’d in the film. They are blanks. The
bookcovers are covered by a sheet over them in which they a package that Gonzalo
gives Prospera. That number does not square with the more numerous book falling
in the eater.
After every third thought shall be my grave, several shot reverse shots of Caliban
and Prospera. She lets him go.
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She lets Ariel, then sequence as he sings where the bee sucks there suck I all in
water with kaleidoscopic patters,
Vut to her
Characters in the play refer to “drowning” make no reference to the ship burning.
Only Ariel, when he describes the shipwreck to Prospero.
The play is about “unwrecking” (the ship is rebuilt; no one harmed; clothes not wet.
Julie Taymor’s The Tempest; opening title over a sand castle—begins to melt in the
rain, Miranda is holding it; cross-cutting between ship and Miranda running;
The bed catches fire; ten cuts to Prospera, then Miranda running to her, ship
burning in the distance; as inside of ship catches fire
Shot of Prospera in the menu is shot when she turns the clouds back after the storm
and after the ship as sunk.
No flashback of knowing how I loved my books, furnished with me”
Ariel merges form watery reflection and makes a splash, literally, as his entrance.
Flashback after he merges to the shipwreck—ship on fire, Ariel surrounded by fire
too. Citing lines about sulpherous ship—so there is textual motivation for showing
it burning.
Boat burning versus book burning.
Ariel quotes Fredidand mockingly “o devils here” (sounds like Caliban)
But are they safe?
Not a hair perished.
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Look. The ship is hid So we see the ship in harbor completely restored.
Ariel is transparent, moves around with a sound effect in a kind of fastforward
tracing.
Flashback of Ariel being trapped in the pine; cut back to prospera with background
of forest slashing down the screen as the new background comes into view-a
variation of the wipe, or inversion of it.
“invisible to every eyeball else”
Prospera on Caliban. We cannot miss him. He does make our fire. Fetches in our
wood.
Caliban gets no flashbacks when he tells the story of showing Prospera the island.
Miranda gets the abhorr’d slave . . . I taught thee language” lines
Prospera so slave hence—the actor was in Amistad, playing a slave; also in
Gladiator.
Ariel sings full fathom five under water, superimposed on shot of Ferdiand hearing
ad looking around to find who is singing, in a series of shots,
“Where should this music be?
Follow it or rather it has dawn me L, it begins again. Falsetto—a bit like Greenaway.
Full fathom, under water, but also in a forest (through which Forest is walking—
close ups of both Ariel and Ferdinand
The ballad does remember my drowned father.
The film’s diegesis separates “realism” from “magical” special effects, and also
combines them, overlaps, in some sequences, differentiating the spirit Airiel) from
the “real” human characters.
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Myself am Naples, ever since my father.
Ariel appears only in shots with Prospera—not in shots of Ferdinand and Miranda.
“I charge thee that thou attend me.”
(Prospera telling Miranda the tale—would cure deafness—does’t thou mark?”—
Prospera thinking her call doesn’t trough? That she has to keep replacing it,
redialing? As if Miranda were not there, as she couldn’t tell by looking to see if
Miranda is listening or not?
Ariel’s pine-trees and paper? Pre ealy modern, I guess. Rags, not wood pulp as
source of paper.
Cut to fire in Propsera’s cave—“so lie there my art”
Propsera didn’t harm a hair of any crew member, she tells Miranda.
Lots of chemical bottles full of liquids in her cave, out of focus in and in soft focus or
in focus with racking focus.
Flashback montage cross cut with Miranda’s speech—and to Prospera. Flashbacks
in bluish hue.
Shot of Gonzalo given her a “package,” a sheet covering something square (the
books?) here is also a chest in her boat.
Boatswain is black
Music sounds a like Nymanish
Foul water shalt thy drink
The DVD menu is worth discussing (will match Anonymess discussion).
It begins and ends with Prospero and is all shown as if underwater.
There are two hsots of books "drowning." There is also shot of the
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ship burning in the distance.
The ship also burns as it is wrecked by Ariel, and there's a shot of
it fully restored in a harbor.
The film is good for us in that it highlights the play’s not so
obvious opposition between burning and drowning.
The fantasy you identified is operative all over the play, I am
realizing. Like Miranda freaking out when the ship goes down and
Prospero reassuring her; but then Ariel has to reassure Prospero, who
contradicts her own reassurance of Miranda and is similarly
reassured--almost the same words--not a hair on their heads harmed.
Ariel just gives a more detailed account of what happened to the
survivors. Ariel also talks about the ship burning (in the play)--I
had forgotten that.
Interesting too what gets a flashback and what does not--there's no
flashback for Prospera getting few books with Gonzalo's help or of her
library WE see no books in a flashback of Prospera and Miranda (baby)
on the boat in which they are set adrift.
Prospera’s Books
DVD menu loop shows everything happening as if underwater; the ship is shown
burning; there are two separate shots of books “drowning”; begins and ends with
Prospera; she is in close up at the end, eyes closed, then open, as if it had been her
25
dream; begins with low angle shot of her in her cloack with her staff—she never
holds her books, no library.
Or garments are as fresh (Gonzalo repeats what Ariel has already said). Same
eeconomy of destruction and resoration—through “made wet”
Burns cross over from prop to non propr from burning to drowning. “drown my
books” last se of “drow” in the play?
Dream/Re/Work
Kindle
The Tempest
Fauxsimile done away with Prospero—techno-magical fantasy of seeing with a
master eye done away with but conserved because it’s done away.
Bringing back materiality and book history not in a kind of boring way but in an
interesting way. Nice way to shift the question that Mowat is asking—what is the
book? To what is the fate of the book? The destruction and fate “Unpacking My
Library,” Destination and Drowning; or destinerrance—destructibility of the letter
—divisibility versus destruction (defaults to the trope of burning or tearing the
paper or the support up). In coming back to Materiality and the prop we also to the
question of the support for Derrida.
What is drowning a book?
26
No special effects when Prospera spies on Miranda and Ferdunand .
A kind winter light on the location—lots of long shadows.
Special effects when Ariel comes in and spies on Gonzalo etc and puts Gonzalo to
sleep. Then Alonso goes to sleep. Only bried shots of Ariel and then just music.
“strange drowsiness” drowsi and drown?
sleepy language
Ariel appears only when Sebastian ad Antonio draw and prepare to murder.
[The film gets boring once we get to Caliban, then trinculo, then Stephano. Turns
into filmed theater. Conversation between S and A cots reverse shots gradually
cutting into closer and closer close ups. The editing is supposed to intensify the
drama.
Drown and dorwsy—sleep and drowning
Ariel shows up “thou liest” behind Trinculo. He appears and disappears.
When he sleeps thou cans’t knock his [Prospero] head down. Having first seized her
books. But remember first to possess her books first.
Burn but her books and that most deeply consider is the beauty of her daughter.
SHOTS OF ARIEL SEPRATE FROM SHOTS OF HUMANS.
Calbian isle full of noises—sleep and sleep again when asked I cried to dream again.
Between S,T, and C abd A,A<, G, and S, shots of Prospero’s in cell—controlling the
weather—a cn ecipse
Special effect for the banquet, but small part of the screen.
27
Prospera puts a feather in a glass, it bursts, a bird flies out, turns into Ariel as harpy
with small boobs. His cloak is like Prospera’s. But remember.
Feathers fall in the background, kind of like books in water. Special effects as
Antonio and Sebastian and Alonso try to fight off the crows that Ariel turns into—
then Prospero crows “they are all within my power. Go bring the rabble.
Ferdinand sings “O mistress mine” long take—like Taymor’s Universe movie.
Ariel’s head on frog that leaps out after Trinculo falls into a pool.
No tongue all eyes be silent
Prospero waves her staff toward the sky—stars / constellations sequence also a
background behind M and F
Like a kaleidoscope/ Superimposed over Prospera. So there is no masque in the
film. Twelfth Night song displaces it.
Our little life is rounded with a sleep.
Prospero does not make eye contact with Ariel most of the time.
Burning dogs chance down Caliban—Ariel also seen with fire behind him.
Shortly shall all my labors end.
Shot of eclipse again.
Their senses I shall restore. And they shall be themselves
“printless feet”
Sets a ring of fire around her after sot of the eclipse passing. The fire becomes faking
—back screen fast-forward montage, time-lapse photography of clouds, ends at “by
my so potent art.”
28
Burning dogs and burning fire around Ariel’s face and burning of the ship and the
fire around Ariel’s face. In the shipwreck (seen twice in the film, the second as a
montage and flashback) the ship catches on fire. But the play references fire only
when Ariel tells Prospero about it.
Economy of special effects in the film. Saved for Ariel and Prospera—only Ariel and
other charades when he hers them into the cell near the end of the film.
No special effects for rough magic; almost one for O Mistress mine; and perhaps
none for the last shot.
The books not drowning—I’ll drown them and given by Gonzalo at offs with the
widespread any characters have of another character drowning. A character thought
drowned we know is alive. Repetition of reassurance—drowning, then no harm:
Prospero of Miranda, then of Proserpa by Ariel.
She addresses them as the are frozen. Hey come awake with “Their understanding
begins to swell.
Ge ties the back of her dress, black zipper in front. Back is like corset.
Behold Prospera—frst shot of her where we can see her entre dress.
Er dres—black and zippers, matches Gonzalo’s, and also S and A’s. They have to stop
at the edge of the ring.
Rack behind
Wracked upon this shore.
When did you lose your daughter
Drown reference characters make leave out any mention of burning.
29
Prospera’s Books
The film does not show the beginning of the book or the end of the book.
No paratexts at any point, so there’s a precursive and recusrsive elippsis of the book
that keeps it by drowning it. Taymor makes explicit a pre-cursive economy of the
book that differs from other economies of drowning in the play; drowning by the
numbers—characters seem to drown but do not. This is a cycle of reassurance; lots
of scenes of reassurance that more or less repeat each other. Prospero even lies
about the drowning of his daughter to Alonso to manufacture a symmetry between
Prospero’s loss and Alonso’s, as if Alonso’s repeated Prospero’s.
Melting sand castle between the opening title for The Tempest, rain begins, camera
dollies back and pans right as we se it begin to melt in a hand that belongs to
Miranda. (use of the words “melt,” “dissolve pace,” and so on in the play) There’s a
storm before the storm. Even before the shipwreck she sees, there is a sandcastle
wreck. Miranda first when she enters the play after the boatswain scene. 1.1.
Melting sand, dissolving sand anticipates Prospero’s
The seven minute long end title sequence of Taymor’s Tempest, designed by
Kyle Cooper, transposes the moment when Prospero “drowns” his books: as the
credits roll and the camera is submerged under water, we watch Prospero’s
books fall slowly through the ocean heading toward the bottom. Taymor
originally cut Prospero’s epilogue from the film script but ended up restoring it. In
her book The Tempest, Taymor writes: “The film’s last image of Prospera on the
ocean cliff, her back to the camera, tossing her magic staff to the dark rocks
30
below, and the staff’s subsequent shattering, is the ending. But when all was cut
and timed and scored and mixed, the rhythm of the end of the film felt truncated,
incomplete. I asked Elliott [Goldenthal] to take these last great words [the
epilogue] and set them to music for the seven-minute-long end-title sequence.
And to that haunting female vocal, sung by Beth Gibbons. The credits rolled and
we drowned the books of Prospera in the deep dark sea” (21).5 Taymor enlarges
1 See Arden intro on responses to Prospero determining readings of the play.
2 The last page of Two Gentleman has the same template as does the last page of The
Tempest, but just Names of the Actors spread out over two columns evenly, no
scene, and it has “FINIS.” Ditto for Merry Wives. Every other play has “Finis”
sometimes at the very bottom of the column of the text, sometimes set off in part of
a blank page as in Macbeth, Hamlet, with an ornament and sometimes no ornament
as in Lear, etc.. There is “the scene Vienna” and a list for names of the actors in
Measure for Measure and “FINIS” across two columns.
Roslaind speaks her epilogue in character. “Ros” There is not “EPILOGVE” separting
her epilogue form the rest of the play.
3 Julie Taymor, The Tempest, Adapted From the Play by William Shakespeare (New
York: Abrams, 2010). Peter Greenaway’s tie-in book, Prospero's Books: A Film of the
Shakespeare's The Tempest (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991) serves as a
paratextual commentary on the film, providing information about the sources of
each the twenty-seven books shown in the film and giving their titles once again as
they are drowned (see pp. 161-62). The Secret of Kells blu-ray edition includes a
comic booklet version of the film.
31
authorial agency in the preface to her book, entitled “Rough Magic,” writing that “we
drowned the books of Prospera.” Yet this enlargement of cinematic authorship
depends on the expansive, leisurely condensation of Prospera’s transposed and
visualized declaration to “drown” her “books” and Prospera’s ventriloquized
epilogue. I read Taymor’s film as an allegory of the immersion of the book into a
4
These lines are sung by Feste, one of the more complex comic foils to appear in a Shakespearean work. He is something of a jester, of course, but he has an unmistakably philosophical underside (“Better a witty fool than a foolish wit”), pressing characters to abandon their self-pity, to recognize that life always brings its burdens — but pressing them also to seize the moment of love, which brings life’s rewards. All of this is very much the message of this sweet, simple, and yet poignant song, which attained celebrity in its own right in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Part of that celebrity was owed not to Shakespeare, however, but to the man who composed the music by which the words came to be known.
Listen to the setting of “O Mistress Mine,” one of the last works composed by Thomas Morley, a student of William Byrd’s who died shortly after the play opened, in the fall of 1602. Although he was an organist at St Paul’s Cathedral and he attempted to write some serious church music, Morley is best known for his perfection of the consort style (the introduction of the “broken consort,” in which wind
32
residual paratexual storage space, sending off her film and accommodating
areaderly and spectatorial desire for an authorial force by encrypting and
spectralizing the absent writer of the book accompanied by a speech turned
requiem sung by a female extra-diegetic voice identified only in the end title
sequence rather than spoken by Helen Mirren (Prospera). The film’s specters are
instruments are added to the conventional strings) and of the English madrigal.
It’s likely that Morley knew and worked with Shakespeare — they lived close to one another in central London and worshiped in the same parish church — and it’s possible that some of his Shakespearean songs were actually commissioned by the Bard, though this has never been firmly established. What’s certain, however, is that Morley was a great admirer of Shakespeare’s writings.
Morley’s works are known for their light style and their conscious importation of folk melodies (such as his amazing setting of “Under the Green Linden” in the The First Booke of Consort Lessons (1597)). They are less ponderous and downbeat than works by such contemporaries as William Byrd and John Dowland, and so are well suited to Shakespearean comic romances. First, listen to a non-vocal broken-consort rendition of “O Mistress Mine” by Stockholms Barockensemble, then to a traditional theatrical performance by Ensemble Chaconne, with Pamela Dellal as soloist. A superior performance by the great Alfred Deller can be found here. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/09/hbc-
33
re/called at the end of tie-in screenplay book. The last two pages of the book show a
still taken from the film’s end title sequence of a book opening up after it has been
plunged into the water with the production and cast credits superimposed over the
left-hand page. See Figures 0 and 0.0, the verso and recto pages).
Figure 0 (verso page) Figure 0.0 (recto page)
Filming an adaptation of The Tempest allows Taymor to perform a paradoxical
salvage operation of the book which is not salvific: precisely because the
900082125 Julie Taymor, The Tempest, Adapted From the Play by William Shakespeare
(New York: Abrams, 2010). Peter Greenaway’s tie-in book, Prospero's Books: A
Film of the Shakespeare's The Tempest (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991)
serves as a paratextual commentary on the film, providing information about the
sources of each the twenty-seven books shown in the films and giving their titles
once again as they are drowned (see p. 161-62). The Secret of Kells blu-ray
edition includes a comic booklet version of the film.
34
drowning books are absent all paratext (no titles or authors are visible on the
covers), the book as a medium serves as a metaphorical storage unit for film, a
book cover like the metal canisters used to house rolls of film that contain, as it
were the author. This paradox may be vividly grasped in the book of the film The
tempest, with the author listed as “Julie Taymor Adapted from the Play by William
Shakespeare”: in a paratextual space usually left blank, namely, the inside back
cover and page opposite, the film credits for the director and actors are printed
just to left of an “uncredited” book falling though water, little bubbles surrounding
it. The book of the film shows a nameless book while also recording Taymor as
the film’s author: the weirdly double move in which Taymor claims a kind of
hybrid authorship-- crediting Shakespeare as her source appears and disappears
in the fold of the of the book as one turns the page and then, presumably, closes
the book. Taymor quietly insists on the drowning Prospera’s unidentifiable books
makes them unreadable even though the pages are open.
Ariel’s bee song transposed from 51. 87-94 to just before Prospero’s “ My Ariel,
chick ,’That is thy charge.” 5.1. 316
Taymor cuts “Please you draw near.”
Crux of lack of a stage exit for Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, p 305, Arden 3.
Miranda: The sky it seems, would pour down stinking pitch
But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek
Dashes the fire out. 1.2.4-5
Alonso: That they were, I wish
Myself were muddied in that oozy bed
35
Where my son lies. 5.1. 150-52
Upon this shore when you were wrecked, was landed
To be king on’t. 5.1.161-62
Ariel says he “landed” the survivors; the passive construction here is rather odd
—“who landed” could easily work—but “was landed” is not just “landed” but implies
a missing agent—someone or some force “landed” Prospero.
Sleep versus awake is a strong binary opposition in 1.2. Miranda put to sleep and at
the end when the boatswain is awakened but his sailors are asleep.
There thou shat find the mariners asleep
Under the hatches. The master and the boatswain
Being awake, During the play, sleep and waking blur, sleeping and death, even
sleepy language.
Taymor’s audiocommentary
When you do the play onstage, the cell is off stage, so you never see it. But when you
do a movie (on sequence before A, A, S and G wander (they awoke earlier).
She says the set by the pool is like “an open book,” the white walls like pages.
[PBS Masterpiece] montage of turning blank pages with faces of stars superimposed.
Red cover and blank pages, open book at the end of the logo sequence]
No books in Prospera’s flashbacks, just alchemy and the funeral of her dead
husband, the duke. She now inherits the post. Taymor says that “in the original
play, Prospero reads his books and therefore loses control. Seems like a good
36
reason, but we . . .”she stresses alchemy because as a witch you could be burned;
you could be burned for alchemy—“set to sea presumably to die”
Question of drowning the book is where it happens in he play, assumng it does.
Sometime before the epilogue, as Mowat indicates. This may be the motivation forh
the prologue, to guanrantee a place for the destruction in the plot. Epilogue not
enitrely superfulous, as Vaughns suggest. Neverthelss, the EPiloge is not the end f te
play, as least not in the First Folio. The end is the scene and he cast of characters.
Drowning the bok registered not in the phyiscal destruction but in a state of
suspended ignorance, of repetion in Greenaway’s case, of recitation. But this
heterogeneity is offset by the monlogical presence of Propsero. The epilogue isa
monologue. It is “spoken by Prospero.” And yet the epilogue has a superfluity, not a
lack. It kicks in because of a lack—but the cause of htat lack and the extent of
Propero before are troubled waters. It makes up for lot sof different lacks—when di
it happen? Problems with the placement in both films.
We can see how the problem plays out across the beginning of the play—title
sequence in Greenaway and end title.
Even more clear in more streamlined adpatian of Taymor’s The Tempest.
Water Trouble
the film has an epilogue but not an end title sequence. In the final shot, “The End”
appears at the bottom of the screen and remains there with additional logo
information as the shot fades to black. The opening title sequence consists of one of
Greenaway’s characteristic tracking shots, the camera moving at the same pace as in
it moves right in lone long take. The end titles are shown there, the below the line
37
credits. The title is also out of sequence, coming just before the credits for the
producers and then Greenaway as director. And Greenaway signature is a playful
shipwreck. The sequence unfolds much like a scroll; a huge book being turned by a
naked man in the opening title sequence is just one of many bizarre and
heterogeneous scenes.
By contrast, the interpolated serial book sequences that interrupt the dialogue from
The Tempest are all set up and set off with the use of a digital paint box, two of whch
we have already seen before the opening title sequence begins.
Prospero ends by liberating Ariel and delivering the epilogue, his close up talking
head shot increasingly shrinking into a smaller frame until it occupies only its center
and is surrounded by black. In an extratexutual epilogue, Prospero’s image then
becomes a photograph of Gielgud on a stage set, and as the camera dollies back at a
smooth pace in what Greenaway calls “a single, bravura take” (163), we see Ariel
(played by three different actors) running towards the camera as a text begins to be
superimposed over the applauding audience of courtiers. This last shot of the film
ends as Ariel is shot in slow motion and then jumps off the screen and over the
camera.
In a moment of “biblioclash,” or uncertainty about whether this liberation from
the page is creative or destructive, the manuscript of The Tempest and of the First
Folio are is saved only insofar as the collected works are split into different print
media (manuscript and print). It differs markedly form the more symmetrical
ending in the screenplay.6 In Greenaway’s extratexutal epilogue, the book returns as
38
an unreadable work of art: a single page an unbound page looks like an abstract
multi-media painting (See figure 7).
Figure 5 Figure 6
Figure 7 Figure 8
Similarly, in the final shot, unreadable letters are written backwards in the upper
right of the screen through animation and run right to left, some letters disappear as
6 In the screenplay, the film’s ending loops back to the beginning: “A series of ever
decreasing splashes drip and plop into the black water . . . thus the beginning of the
film is reprised. A final splash plops . . . all water-movement ceases and the screen is
a black velvet void” (Prospero's Books: A Film of the Shakespeare's The Tempest, 164).
39
others appear in a recursive cycle. (See figure 7.) “The End,” the date of Prospero’s
Books, and the film’s production companies appear first on bottom of the final page
but then only on the otherwise black screen. (See figure 8.) Ariel is liberated twice,
the second from the page or painting, animated text.
Destruction itself is divisible:
Sometime I’d divide / And burn in many places—on the topmast,
The yards and bowsprit would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join 1.2. 198-200
Ariel burns. He divides, disperses, then meets and joins. If the book is a spirit, it can’t
be burned.
FINIS. It
“You have oft begun to tell”
His cell, his closet, libraryNeglect of biopolitics for bibliomania is what ended up on him on the island
What is to be left on an uninhabitable island? Caliban as libraraian? Or is the epilogue a kind of casting off, a stage direction that retroprojects Prospero’s power and preence back to the very start of the play? Whereas there is no stage direction for him, and in Taymor’s fim, Miranda is the one watching—there’s an affect short-ciuiting because she doesn’t know how to sfeel because she doesn’t knowwhat her senses are telling her.Destruciton of the ship by fire and by water.The plays is lke an archive that can’t become a crypt. I fyouwant to read “grave” as a coded reference ot the text as a crypt, you are dealing with the drowning of the book
40
by trying to arrest its falling. No rest fo rhte books in Taymor’s films. Absnece of the book cretes problems fo rht contents of the books but also for the contents of the play iself, the extent to which it contains itself. The frist scene frame is a problem as much as the epilogue.
If you read “grave” as crypt, you allow yourself to posit an author, a presence, rather than specter, a referent that is ever present across the text. You not only fill in what isn’t there. SO the moment Propsoer is already gone, about to be gone, on his way out—where did that exit begin? is the moment where he can be nstalled as a commanding presence over the play, a sort of Gielgud, except that for Greenaway, even this fantasy gets disrupted. The detective genre wants to to turn the island as archive in to a crypt, whereas as an unihabitabble island, it is an archive htat refuses to become a crypt. The epilogue doesn’t settle, it keep turning. You can try to turn” the text as a Cold War spy irng might. But it can’t stop it, divide it into sides.
Caliban is left without the books in Taymor’s film.
Full fathom five—already sung earlier by Prospero. SO it too repeats. Starting with Miranda only means you have to shuffle the ending around.
If Propsero has exited and returned, he may have doffed some of his ducal trappings and appear I a simple shirt or gown. Such theatrical choices can indiciate Prospoer’s loss ofp power or the actor’s loss of his role.
The drowning of the book is a mourning that doesn’t end or a mourning that never begins. “set me free”The line about “Scene, an uninhabited island goes missing in the edition. 0] , it is cited, then other words are numbered +1, +4 but hten 6, 8, 12, and 15 to indicate modernized spellings. The facing page begins by glossing “Nmaes of the Actors” as 0.1.Have you a mind to sink?1.1.38 Boatswain “I’ll warrant him for drowning” 1.1.45 Gonzalo 1.2. “Enter PROPSERO and MIRANDA” p. 171
Epilogue—a peritext, but sounds like an epitext. Prospero’s Books drops out the
“Enter” and “Master. So who is speaking the line “boatswain” no stage direction for
Prospero to be or for Miranda to be there. You have to wait. Like Hamlet, there is
something there before the plays begin, but in Tempest, there is a scene described
that goes missing in Arden 3. Uninhabitable island.
41
Where to interpolate the book destruction related to where the films begin and how
they begin though the decisions can be made. Retrosporjection of Prospero over the
entire play—not just hs book that matters, but his presernce—his retroprojection is
also a spectraorphaics which shows where he is not there—but nevertheless , for
some readers, filmmakers, and so on, already there. There’s a beginning befre the
beginning. Where exactly before the epilogue did he do it? Where do you show it?
Crates a new problem Mowat doesn’t address.
No one ever quite makes it to the island—a shipwreck, but we learn after the fact of
their arrival
Suspended ignorance, repetition already in first scene—consequence of drowning a
book-doesn’t begin and doesn’t end –cast off cast-away books as cast-off like Caliban
we depart form Derrida always fine-but now marination.
Drowning a book means casting, being cast off, disembarking no beginning, no
ending, only a kind of repetition with ellipsis. Book never arrives, nor do which
closure available through figures of burning, ash, cinders, fire—in Derrida. No
metarchive because something cannot be archived, but there is also a problem
“internal’ in this case the un-inhabitable island. Ends with disembarkation. No
book, no media, no material support either. Miranda’s position if suspended
ignorance has to be fully resolved “Sit down, / For now though must know further.”
1.2.33
And to him put
The manage of my state, as at that time
Through all the signories it was the first,
42
And Prospero the prime Duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies. 1.2. 69-77
Me, poor man, my library / Was dukedom large enough. 1.2. 109-110
So dry he was for sway 1.1.112
And by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star 1.2. 180-81
But her state of suspended ignorance does not come to an end, her questions put to
an end:
“Here cease more questions.” 1.2. 183 And he puts her to sleep. “Thou art inclined
to sleep; ‘tis a good dullness” 1.2. 185
This is one of the places where sleep and dullness are transvalued.
The Arden 3 reproduces the last page of the Folio on p. 128 It includes “Finis.” in a
border through the blank space—about the a third of the bottom of the page—
below the EPILOGVE.
43
44
In Heidegger’s sense of Gestell, or enframing, the text is messed up at the end, since
exuent omnes would include Prospero. Of course, Prospero could go off stage and
then return, but that would confuse audiences since they would think the play was
over and start clapping before Prospero had a chance to return. Or Prospero could
almost go off-stage but then stop and turn around. [In Prospero’s Books, Greenaway
has Prospero look out to his right as he says “please you draw near” and then furn to
facae the camera, looking out over it rather than at it, as he dleivers the epilogue. ]
45
46
Page layout of the Folio. Epilogue—has Prospero in front of it. Rosalind in and out
of the epilogue.
{repetition of the word “charms”
Your charm so strongly works ‘em 5.1.17 (p. 285)
The airy charm” 5.1. 54, p. 288)
Now my charms are all o’erthrown (Epilogue, 1, p. 307)]
Notice too that “Please you draw near,” which is the beginning of the epilogue,
precedes it. The play ends in a rather strange way. The page layout divides the text
and paratexts (Epilogue and dramatis personae in a way that makes both
unreadable in relation to the other (both text and epilogue that is). Dramatis
Personae always come too late to be of much help. Even the “Names of the Actors”
47
heads the list, does their placement also turn the proper names of the characters
into citations? I suppose critics must have talked about the line “Scene, an
uninhabitable island” as well. What is the temporality of that line? Is it referring tot
the beginning, t o an island which Caliban and Prospero have managed to inhabit?
Or does it refer to the island after Prospero and friends have left? “Unhabitable”
differs from uninhabited in a curious way in either case.
“Please you draw” also can make sense. As a stage direction it makes no sense for
Prospero to tell the characters to come close when they are in the process of exiting
the stage. It makes no sense to the audience or can’t physically come closer to the
stage. I suppose some people, groundlings, could squeeze forward a bit. But “draw
near” is a stage direction in other lays, like Richard II, where one character tells
other characters to come closer while that character (who commands) remains
stationary.
Even “if please you draw near” is an invitation to the groundlings, the “you” is
divisible—those in the boxes cannot come closer—though I suppose they could lean
forward a bit. But they would thus still be divisible because they would be drawing
near in a different way. So the addressee is a divided destination that Prospero’s
letter will never have arrived but that requires and indebts the addressee to sign –
with his or her (“your) hands” and “gentle breath.” (“Gentle” of course elevates the
groundlings to aristocrats) The audience has to remember to breath, and, in
Derrida’s terms, to posthume, and then to pray silently (“relieved by prayer”).
“Indulgence” is a gift economy that archives a kind of counterfeiting: “set me free”
(20, p. 308) repeats Prospero’s “be free” (5.1. 317) to Ariel, though Prospero does
48
not invoke Ariel but the “deceiver” as his precursor (odd that Prospero uses the
singular “deceiver,” not the plural “deceivers,” since Alonso is obviously not the only
deceiver Prospero pardons). Is Prospero making himself into a dramatis persona
non gratis?
the "every third
thought shall be my grave." Most readers, as far as I know, focus on
the word "third." They assume grave refers to a burial plot. [And editors refer to it
when trying to gloss “for I / have given you here a third of my life, / Or that for
which I live, who once again, I tender to thy hand.” See Adren 3, n 41.3. p. 264, for
example. The “third” gets routed to a measurement of Prospero’s age by editors.
But there is anarchivity in the repetition since the third thought cannot refer back to
Miranda because Prospero calls her—weirdly—“a third of mine own life,” which
actually makes no sense) But, back to the meaning of “grave” as burial plot . . .
. , without wanting to put too much pressure on "grave," I wonder if
this isn't also possible to read as an invitation, or as an
auto-activation of a readin gof what follows as encrypted, the book
itself being the grave. Like engraving. I know. Kind of ridiculous.
Yet . . . There's also "shall" rather than "will," as if Prospero is
predicting an arc of repetition that has nothing to with desire--an
archiving of triple time that blocks the death drive? I mean it
sounds compulsive--every third--yet it also skips two beats rather
than repeats every beat, as it would in Freud--every thought will be of
my burial plot. . I was thinking more too about the strangeness of
49
the epilogue--I mean why are there epilogues without prologues
sometimes n Shakespeare, or a frame (Christopher Sly) that does not
return? Why isn't R and J the norm? AMND is already off of being R
and J's comic opposite in this respect. I also want to check to see
which plays in the Folio--0other than The Tempest have the dramatis
personae at the end. Everyone talks about The Tempest coming first
even though it is assumed to be have been written last. No one seems
to read the Folio--the page layout. The "Scene, Uninhabited Island"
line is particularly odd since it has to be retrospectively across the
entire play from end to beginning and back (or so I would say).
Uninhabitable is at odds with habited, not habited, the terms on which
hte plot of the play is based (repetitively--first Caliban, who recalls Sycorax,--“this
island’s mine” then Prospero—and before Sycorax?
Taymor film:
She is stream(line)ing the film, changing the book into the liquefaction of cinema.
She is retrofitting of the epilogue in the play follows form keeping Prospero out of
the beginning but putting Miranda in instead. Castle melting—anticipates cloud
capp’d towers—she is a kind of proto-Prospera, even as that is cut from the film.
The text as a kind of media installation, or Ge-stell, in Heidegger, an enframing, or
infrastructure.
50
Spoken by Prospero is rather odd because he was the last to speak. So it indicates
some kind of break. Opens up divisions—author-function becomes a name
“a drowning mark”
“again” used twice in 1.2. Alonso et al come back on deck “again” and then
Boatswain says “again”
Alreadya repetition in the shipwreck.
No master calling boatswain Taymor’s film
Miranda becomes something like Ariel in the first scene-mine would , were I
human,,” who sees Prospera still in a rage (enter Prospero and Miranda—we remain
in ignorance longer int eh f the play htan we do in Taymor’s film.
Taymor moves the epilogue into the paratextual space of the end title sequence-
designed by Kyle Cooper so it has some relation to the internalseqiuecnes designed
by him as well; special effects. Low tech in the case of the end titles. The books
never reach the bootm, never come ot a rest. And Epilogue is spoken by Prospero in
the text but by Portishad, turned intoa song and a music video, like “O Mistress
Mine.” The ending of the fiom, the transposition of the destruction, the casting off of
Claiban after the others have left, even though the stage direction calls for his exit
earlier, with Stephano and Trinculo, reated to the beginning of the film with
Miranda wide awake, on high alert, in a state of ermergency. Retroprojetio of a
woman to woman linkfrom beginning to end even as Prospera disappears. We don’t
see her throw the books in. She is here only insofar as she is the person off screen
throwing the boks in, one by on. First line spoken by the master before we know he
51
is the master (on stage). Text fills in something htat is missing, with te stage
direction. Drowning mark. Drowning as a kind of writing of deat, of destiny, cables.
End after the end of the epilogue in the tempest a Airle flies out of the screen.
We broke the staff and the movie ended here. Create a song; Kyle Cooper would
shoot these drowning books
It really is about the end of books.
The last shot of the books underwater is a very long take. Long takes for end title
sequences are not unusual. But Taymor’s recalls two earlier unusually long takes in
the film, the first when Ferdinand sings “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night” to
Mirnda, while both are in close-up, she with her head lying on his shoulder; the
second is of Prospera at the end of “our revels now have ended.” Special effects for
the speech end just before “This rough magic,” when the film cuts to a straight on
shot of Prospera. As she begins to deliver the rest of the speech, the camera
gradually dollies in on your face in what becomes an extraordinarily tight close-up
of her face: one can no longer she her mouth just before she says “I’ll drown my
books.”
End credits:
Books fall—music—then a woman sings the epilogue to a minor key song—afer
producer credit
Visiual effects supervisor Kyle Cooper
“which was to please”
52
followed guitar—then “now I want spirits to inform
cast members show
to title The TEpest
A Julie Taymor film
And cones to below the end the line credits boks have Laurence Sterne marble
covers
“let your indulgence (repeated)
last book disap
sets me free
Now I want spirits to inform” and the epilogue repeats lreased by prayer
More guitatr—also a lead guitatr-builds louder, same loop
Now I want sirits begins over again
By prayer . .which piecres so, piereces that it assaults, mery itself and frees . .
Puse
A’as you form faults from
Coda Betha Williams
Let your indulgence, let your indulgence set me free as final credits appea adnd
copyright.
One last book—big—with extrapages, then sound, then an icon with apage, three
moreicons, then warning,
53
Antipiracy warning
Leads singer is Portishead. And htt is the movie. If one reads the sung epilogue with
the paratextless books, you can hear the referent of "me" and "I" as the books
(floating down one by one). It is certainly not prosper singing. The books are being
preserved a way as if in an aquarium, swimming around like jellyfish
“biobiblianimots”, and they are also being destroyed. The disappearance of
Propsera—along with the absence of paratexts could be as evidence of their
liberation. No one, not just Prospera, owns them, no one has title (unlike the end
titles), and their "voice" is anonymous.
Aliban is not naked,a s the screenplay says—he wears a loincloth—and the boos do
not fall one by one but sometimes fall in groups.
Prospera’s books are covered in a white sheet. GOnazalo hands them to Prospera as
he sails of f with Mrana. So they are never identifiable.
Then close up of Mirren “But this rough magic I here abjure. Camera dollies in to a
tighter and tighter close up I’ll drown my books. You can only see her eyes.
Shot of Ariel in special effects lead A, S G to the burnt circle. She freezes them )
freeze tag) . The burnt circle still operates—A and S find that they cannot step over
it.
Taymor film:
54
We broke the staff and the movie ended here. Create a song; Kyle Cooper would
shoot these drowning books
It really is about the end and of books.
Terminating a medium, burning versus drowning. How do books die? What will it
mean to have ended the play by drowning books?
The last shot of the books underwater is a very long take. Long takes for end title
sequences are not unusual. But Taymor’s recalls two earlier unusually long takes in
the film, the first when Ferdinand sings “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night” to
Mirnda, while both are in close-up, she with her head lying on his shoulder; the
second is of Prospera at the end of “our revels now have ended.” Special effects for
the speech end just before “This rough magic,” when the film cuts to a straight on
shot of Prospera. As she begins to deliver the rest of the speech, the camera
gradually dollies in on your face in what becomes an extraordinarily tight close-up
of her face: one can no longer she her mouth just before she says “I’ll drown my
books.”
End credits:
Books fall—music—then a woman sings the epilogue to a minor key song—afer
producer credit
Visiual effects supervisor Kyle Cooper
“which was to please”
followed guitar—then “now I want spirits to inform
cast members show
55
to title The TEpest
A Julie Taymor film
And cones to below the end the line credits boks have Laurence Sterne marble
covers
“let your indulgence (repeated)
last book disap
sets me free
Now I want spirits to inform” and the epilogue repeats lreased by prayer
More guitatr—also a lead guitatr-builds louder, same loop
Now I want sirits begins over again
By prayer . .which piecres so, piereces that it assaults, mery itself and frees . .
Puse
A’as you form faults from
Coda Betha Williams
Let your indulgence, let your indulgence set me free as final credits appea adnd
copyright.
One last book—big—with extrapages, then sound, then an icon with apage, three
moreicons, then warning,
Antipiracy warning
56
Leads singer is Portishead. And htt is the movie. If one reads the sung epilogue with
the paratextless books, you can hear the referent of "me" and "I" as the books
(floating down one by one). It is certainly not prosper singing. The books are being
preserved a way as if in an aquarium, swimming around like jellyfish
“biobiblianimots”, and they are also being destroyed. The disappearance of
Propsera—along with the absence of paratexts could be as evidence of their
liberation. No one, not just Prospera, owns them, no one has title (unlike the end
titles), and their "voice" is anonymous.
Aliban is not naked,a s the screenplay says—he wears a loincloth—and the boos do
not fall one by one but sometimes fall in groups.
Prospera’s books are covered in a white sheet. GOnazalo hands them to Prospera as
he sails of f with Mrana. So they are never identifiable.
Then close up of Mirren “But this rough magic I here abjure. Camera dollies in to a
tighter and tighter close up I’ll drown my books. You can only see her eyes.
Shot of Ariel in special effects lead A, S G to the burnt circle. She freezes them )
freeze tag) . The burnt circle still operates—A and S find that they cannot step over
it.
Why is the last paragraph of Archive Fever about Freud burning?
We will always wonder what, in this mal d’archive, he [Freud] may have
burned. We will always wonder, sharing with compassion in this archive
fever, what have burned of his secret passions, of his correspondence, or of
his “life.” Burned without limit, without remains, and without knowledge.
With no possible response, be it spectral or not, short of or beyond
57
suppression, on the other edge of repression, originary or secondary, without
a name, without the least symptom, and without even an ash.
Naples, 22-28 May 19947
In Archive Fever, Derrida goes back to Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the same text
that Derrida says in “Love Lacan” he attempted “a reading of Beyond the Pleasure
Principle. . . (in ‘To Speculate--on Freud”’),” rereading in Freud’s text in Archive Fever
in relation to the archive and the death drive, to the archive oriented toward the
future, not the past, in which anarchival repetition is, if not without repetition, at
least repetition without compulsion. 8
The plethora of repetitions of shots in the film that recall previous shots that may
in turn recall other shots do not collect themselves into an archive that could
generate a reading of the film; if the destruction of the books is their archiving, so
the film is the archiving of its own repetitions without an archive. Even before the
books are drowned and destroyed in this sequence, some have already been shown
underwater and damaged. The Book of Water, the first to be inventoried is being
7 Archive Fever Postscript,” op cit, 101. We may add in passing that what Freud
burned of his archive is itself uncertain. See the the introduction to Sigmund Freud
and C. G. Jung, The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud
and C. G Jung, xix.
58
rained on and urinated on by the youngest Ariel appears, its pages clearing being
damaged so much that they start to go blank and come unbound. This book is the
only one to be followed by a second film of an inventoried book. After the first book
We see pages of a book being rained in this second, inventoried inventory, and it is
impossible to tell if this book shows more pages from the Book of Water inventoried
before it or a book that has gone missing, a book that surfaces as a book that has not
been archived. Similarly, there are no books in the shot when Prospero says “’ll
drown my books” [sic] and the shot of his books being burned called for in the
shooting script is not in the film; in its place, but in a slightly different order, we see
8 Post Card, op cit, 41. See also “The librarian seemed to know me . . . but this did not
get me out of the oath. She asked me to read it . . . Therefore I read it and handed her
back the cardboard covered with a transparent paper that had tendered me. At this
point, she starts to insist, I had not understood: no, you have to read it out loud. I did
so . . . What would an oath that you did not say out loud be worth, an oath that you
would only read, or not say be worth, an oath that you would only read, or that
while writing you would only read? Or that you would telephone? Or whose tape
you would send? I leave you to follow up.” 208 “Did I tell you, the oath that I had to
swear out loud (and without which I could never have been permitted to enter,
stipulated, among other things, that I introduce neither fire nor flame into the
premises: “I hereby undertake . . . not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any
fire or flame . . . and I promise to obey all the rules of the library.” 215-16. And see,
among others, the passages relating reading and fire on pp. 23; 40; 58; 171; 176;
180; 233; and 225.
59
Prospero on he floor, his head bleeding, his right arm raised, as pages of books and
sand swirl past him.9
Put in ways in which Taymor streamlines drowning and books. Contrast with
Prospero’s Books—tak about together rather than sequentially, one at a time.
9 A pile of books in Prospero’s library are shown being burned.
60